How Do You Know...

How do you know if Hick has taken a week off from work?

No. The answer is NOT, "Your garbage can is empty, and your dog is pregnant." That's how you know if a Frenchman has been in your back yard. Hey, now! Don't be hatin' on me, you of the French persuasion. I am only plagiarizing Stephen King.

You know that Hick has taken a week off from work when he wets your pants. It's true. Don't you hate it when that happens? When you come home from a hard day in the classroom, eager to slip into something more comfortable, only to discover that you've slipped into something LESS comfortable?

I have a favorite pair of dark blue cotton sweatpants that I wear around the house. They're relatively new. I had to draft a replacement for my old gray pair with the purple stripe, due to a rather large hole down the outside of the right leg. I quickly tired of giving free peep shows and grasping the onion-skin-paper-thin edges of that purple stripe. I drape my blue sweatpants over the edge of the forest green triangle garden tub in our master bathroom. They faithfully wait for me from 6:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.

I see no reason to hang my sweatpants on a hanger. They're SWEATPANTS, by cracky! Nor am I compelled to fold them and put them in a drawer. And I'm too much of a proper lady to kick them in a pile and leave them on the bathroom floor. So they hang on the side of the tub. It's not like Hick is going to be hosting Queen Elizabeth II for high tea while I'm away minding freshmen who say clever things like, "Feel my butt." He doesn't even know how to make cucumber sandwiches. And I'm pretty sure Publishers Clearing House will not barge in with their cameras. Likewise, Geraldo Rivera will not be broadcasting a special during which he will unseal the storage panels that enclose the tub. I'm pretty sure those sweatpants are not going to cause any harm in their intermediate resting place while I'm at work.

Our reunion each evening is joyous. Not me and Hick. Me and my sweatpants. Hick wasn't even home Monday evening. I would have brushed past him anyway, in a beeline for my comfy loungewear. I was stoked. Tossed my work pants into the walk-in closet. Reached for the seat of my pants. And found nothing. They were not where I had left them. They had jumped over the ceramic-tile-road to the toilet, and hung themselves upon my towel rack. My pants were cohabiting with my towel. The secret life of linens. Who knew?

I hopped into those dear saggy sweatpants faster than the Easter Bunny fills baskets and hides eggs on Easter morn. My pants did not feel quite right. It must have been...oh...I don't know...perhaps...THE GALLON OF WATER THEY WERE RETAINING like a premenstrual circus fat lady on a high-salt diet. I felt like a toddler in a morning Pull-Up. What a fine how-do-you-do THIS was for the gal who brings home the bacon.

I left them on. But I stopped short of trying to make The Water Pants happen. I'm no Gretchen Wieners. Even though my pants looked mighty FETCH. I knew, deep in my heart, that my soggy sweatpants were never going to become the new Water Bra. Duh! You wear them on your butt and legs, not on your boobs.

Since Hick was not at home for inquisition and chastisement purposes, I could only guess the method to his madness. It looked like he had undertaken some project with the garden tub. Not wiping all three sides to make it shine. Not cleaning the interior. More subtle. Churning vinegar through the jets, perhaps. Though I did not check to see if my vinegar was missing, and the house did not smell like egg-dying gone awry. Apparently, Hick had taken umbrage to the sight of my sweatpants on the side of the tub, neither sweating nor panting, as he went about his task. So he hung them on my towel rack. On top of my morning shower towel. Which had wiped me down like an ultra-efficient squeegee, its nubby nubbins thirstily imbibing the droplets of well-water from my rather large expanse of epidermis.

Hick is very lucky that no chafing ensued.